Bowne, Borden. 


Philosophy of Christian Science. 


DUKE 
UNIVERSITY 


LIBRARY 


Philosophy of Christian 


Science 


By 
BORDEN P. BOWNE, LL.D. 


Professor in Boston University 


; THE ABINGDON PRESS 
NEW YORK CiNCIBNATI 


Copyright, 1908, by 
EATON & MAINS 


First Edition Printed September, 1908 
Reprinted March, 1909; January, 1915 


PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN 
SCIENCE 


ee eee fi 4AM asked to say a word about 
on i the philosophy of Christian 
Hy Science. I am the more willing 
aa to do this, as I find I am fre- 
bas! 7 bteeete referred to by the 
ee of this cult, not, indeed, as holding 
their view, but as having a philosophy which 
readily lends itself to it. 

The claim we commonly hear in this con- 
nection is that pain, disease and evil in 


ic 


Bea 
a 


general are unreal, and hence exist only in: 


our thought. We have omy to correct 
our thought then, and t they vanish into 
their native nothingness. In this claim the 
Christian Scientist fails a prey to the con- 
fusion which infests the word reality—a con- 
fusion continually manifesting et in philo- 


sophical literature. 


/ Without stopping to recite the various 
‘ meanings of this word, it suffices to point 


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out that all our thinking about life and the; 


/ world must begin with experience, and that: 
experience itself must be accepted as real.i 


But when we speak of the reality of experience 
we do not mean to say anything metaphysical, 


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but simply to state that the objects of ex- 
perience, these things and persons about us, 
whatever may be their ultimate nature, are 
facts with which we have to reckon and to 
which we have to adjust ourselves in order 
to live. The order of external nature is some-’\ 
thing we cannot ignore, and the order of ours 
physical dependence is something we cannot » 
escape. Now experience in this sense makes 
up the great contents of life, and the knowl- 
edge of experience in this sense and of the 
way in which its factors hang together is the 
sum of practical wisdom. Whether we shall’ 
call it real.or not is a matter of very little 
moment, provided we observe that, whatever — 
we call it, it has to be recognized just the 
same, and that we have to adjust ourselves to: 
it, under whatever name, if we are to live. - 
In this sense, then, _ experience is real, and . 
practical; this is a, most important sense | 
and no. metaphysics would make it more or | 
less real for practical purposes. To illustrate: 
We find on studying this order of ex- 
perience that (there are certain ways of being 
and happening in it. Things coexist in cer- 
tain waysand events succeed one another 
according to certain laws. If we decide to 
call these things phenomena the experience | 
is not changed. If we call them illusions 
still the experience is not changed. If we 


. call them nothings still the experience is not» 
changed, and practical science remains just~ 
what it was before. Or suppose we were” 
agnostics with regard to the physical ele- 
ments, and should say we have no idea what 
the true nature of, say, oxygen and hydrogen 
may be. We still know that a certain quan- 
tity of what we call oxygen can be united 
with a certain quantity of what we call 
hydrogen to form a certain quantity of what 
we call water, and that we can use this thing 
we call water in a great many ways of prac- 
tical importance. Or if we should call these 
things ideas we still know that the hydrogen 
idea can be united with the oxygen idea to 
produce the water idea and the water idea 
can be manipulated so as to produce a lot of 
other ideas. Or, finally, if we should call 
them nothings we know that the hydrogen 
nothing can be united with the oxygen noth- 
ing to form the water nothing, and the water 
nothing may give rise to a good many other 
nothings, and life remains just what it was 
before. _ 

It is, then, a great mistake to fancy that 
our metaphysics is the source of experience, 
or that it in any way makes the experience 
real or unreal. The experience stands abso- 
lutely in its own right, whether the meta- 


) physicians can make anything out of it or 
( 


not. And the experience remains the same 
under one system of metaphysics as under 
another. Thus Berkeley, Mill, and Hume 
and Reid and Hamilton differed widely in 
their metaphysics, but practically they had 
to live in the same way. Kant, with his 
ideality of space and time, found it no easier 
to get around in the world than the ordinary 
realist on that subject. Berkeley found his 
butcher’s bill and his grocer’s bill just as 
important a matter, and just as difficult to 
pay, as Reid. So on the plane of experience 
we are all alike and the philosophers cannot 
help us. Neither can they molest us or make 
us afraid. If the philosophers can do any-) 
thing it must be in the way of interpreting ¢ 
experience, not in the way of producing or ) 
verifying it. 

In this sense, then, experience is real and 
carries its truth or verification in itself. It 
may be that the study of experience would 
compel us to go behind it to find its causal 
explanation and this would carry us out into 
the field of metaphysics» but it can never 
lead us behind it in the way of denying the 
experience, for experience“ is both first and 
last, first as the foundation of our theorizing 
and last as that by which the theorizing 
must be judged. 

Now this fact is overlooked by a great 


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many philosophers and also by the Christian 
Science speculators. They point out that 
matter is unreal, and various other things are 
unreal, and then conclude that this un- 
reality in some ways affects the experience. 
In truth the affirmation is a metaphysical 
one. Thus we may say that disease and pain 
are not realities, meaning thereby that they 
are not substances. We can also say that 
sin is not a reality, evil is not a reality, death 
is not a reality, and as substantive facts, of 
course, they are not real. Or we might say 
with certain pantheistic philosophers that the 
finite is not real, meaning thereby that over 
against the infinite substance finite things are 
transitory or dependent. But all of these 
statements are metaphysical, and have no 
bearing upon the reality of experience. Pain) 
is not real as a thing, but is an actual occur- | 
tence in experience. Disease is not a sub-— 
stance, but it is a condition, nevertheless, 
from which we suffer. Death is only an event, \ 
but still it is appointed unto all men once to , 
die. It is plain that these things remain, ; 
whatever name we give them, and that we 
have to adjust ourselves to them, whatever 
our metaphysics may be. Hunger may be 
an illusion, but the only known way of 
effectively dealing with it is by securing a 
certain other kind of illusion, known as food, 
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and applying the latter to the removal of the ° 
former. So with cold and divers other un- | 
pleasant facts, they may be illusions, but they | 
will be very grievous illusions unless we 
apply other illusions known as shelter, cloth- \ 
ing, warmth and the like. Arsenic may be : 
an illusion or non-existent, but we must not 
swallow it, nevertheless. A live wire may be 
an illusion, but we must not take hold of it. 
Our bodies also may be illusions, but we must ~ 
at least treat them in certain ways, other- \ 
wise certain other unpleasant illusions will 
be sure to arise. If they were absolutely real 
we should not be more bound by them than 
we are. ° . 
It is plain, then, that the order of ex- 
perience is something which we cannot pro- 
duce at will or dismiss at pleasure. Whatever 
our metaphysics, it is practically as real for 
the most determined idealist as it would be 
for the most besotted realist. If anyone is 
in doubt on this point let him make the ex- 
periment. Let him consider whether he 
could stand out of doors in scanty clothing 
through a January blizzard, whether he could 
swallow safely strychnine in large doses, 
handle a live wire, put his hand in the fire, 
chop off his fingers, sit comfortably on a cake 
of ice, renounce food, and so forth. Here is 
a large field for experiment for anyone who 


8 


doubts and wishes to try and see. And be- 
fore long it will appear that there is an order 
of experience which for all practical purposes 
is real. That is, we do not produce it and we 
cannot escape it. We have to adjust our- 
selves to it whether we like it or not, if we 
expect to live. 

Now a Christian Scientist who admits this’ 
differs practically from the rest of us in noth- © 
ing but words. His theoretical difference, if” 
there be any, lies in the field of metaphysics, 
and that is purely a matter of speculation. 
If he insists that his metaphysics can exorcise 
a blizzard or quench the violence of fire or 
put to flight the many ills that flesh is heir to, 
or do away with hunger and cold and pain, 
then, as just suggested, there is ample room 
for decisive experiment. By keeping this 
point in mind we shall at least escape the 
confusion that arises from the ambiguity of 
this word reality, and we may have a chance 
to test the validity of our notions. In the 
long run the death rate seems to be aboutS 
one apiece for all of us, Christian Scientists ~ 
and other folk alike. : 

Apart from this misplaced metaphysics, the \ 
doctrine appears to be simply an emphasis of / 
a truth quite overlooked in the recent ma- ¢ 
terialistic period, and never until lately duly } 
emphasized by medical science, namely, that / 


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hy LIAS MERE zo 


the state of mind has great significance for 
health or disease, and that, therefore, the 
wise thing for all persons to do, who 10pe to 
live, is to maintain as much cheerfulness and 
hopefulness and courage as possible. With 
this understanding Christianity is probably 
the best prescription for successful living that 
can be given. Trust God, do your best and 
be not afraid. This is the gist of the matter, 
and this calls for no expensive outlay for 
healers or other persons financially interested. 


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DATE DUE 


APR14 
WOV 1 
NO 

166 


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